After visit to Tsubajin we are visiting OhiMuseum of Ohi Chozaemon Ware a pottery family
business run form more than 350 years since 1666.
The origins of this family
and their art are as follows:
When the founder of the urasenke style of tea
ceremony, Sen-so Soshitsu was invited to Kanazawa as the lord of the tea
ceremony for the Kaga Clan in 1666 ,the first Chozaemon came with him and
established Ohiyaki in Kanazawa .He devoted his life to creating
thecharacteristic Kanazawa culture. The Ohi ware method is to form the shape by
hand, curving off excess bits with a spatula without using a wheel .At the
firing stage, the piece is glazed and put into the kiln . Then the temperature
is increased sharply within a short time , and the piece is taken out to cool
down rapidly .This method requires sudden temperature changes ,so finding good
clay soil is important .The 1st Chozaemon found the most suitable soil in Ohi
Village which is a suburb of Kanazawa.
On our ride to Kanazawa Prof. Goto showed me a very interesting picture comparing tea bowls made by different generations. The main
questions we were discussing was:
“Is it continuity, change or both?”
11thOhi Chozaemon (Toshio) is an impressive person an accomplished modern artist
with a global career of giving lectures and workshop all over the world. Ohi Chozaemon family is well know in Japan and has been recognized by the
government for their contribution to Japanese culture. One of the interesting
things our host said during our visit was that by holding a tea cup he can
immediately feel the character and the mood of the person who created it and
understand it much better that trough books or memoirs. Although this ‘sixth
sense’ is inaccessible to majority of ‘average’ human beings, it is a
manifestation of an implicit connection trough art and craft that can
transcends time and space.
In fact to say that
Ohiyaki is a 'business' is to completely miss the point... – pottery ware in Japan
is one of the important art forms which are used in tea ceremony and Ohi Ware has strong ties to urasenke
school of tea ceremony. As a result it is more an art that a business.
Then again, if you run a business for more than 350 years isn't it, by
definition, something more than a business? Doesn’t it transcend the average
human and customer life? Doesn’t it become something more timeless like art of
which we become ‘custodians’ rather than ‘managers’?
